Mal Colston's shabby legacy

A time-server's passing highlights the
presence of many also-rans in politics.

The death in 1975 of Queensland Labor senator Bert Milliner and the cynical and inappropriate reaction to it by then premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen were the making of Mal Colston, the former senator who died on Saturday. Sir Joh, anxious to frustrate and bring down the Whitlam government, decided not to fill Senator Milliner's place in the senate with Dr Colston, who had been number three on the Labor ticket at the previous election and who, under a long-standing convention should have filled the vacancy. Instead, Sir Joh gave the Senate seat to the hapless, Pat Field, whose anti-Labor vote helped create the constitutional crisis later that year. The ALP, incensed at Sir Joh's behaviour, elevated Dr Colston to the top of its ticket at the double dissolution election in December 1975. Thus began a long and, for the taxpayer, expensive career for the former teacher and public servant.

After the brouhaha in 1975, it is fair to say that the vast majority of Australians, even those with an intense interest in politics, did not hear of Dr Colston again until budget day in 1996, when he resigned from the ALP over his caucus colleagues' refusal to allow him to retain the deputy presidency of the Senate. After years of doing little more than making up the numbers, taking every publicly-funded trip on offer, chairing a few committees and making the most of the various allowances available to federal MPs, Dr Colston felt this slight, which would deny him a few thousand dollars extra remuneration per year, was too much to bear. He walked out on Labor and, with the support of the Howard Government which was desperate for his vote, kept his cherished deputy president's spot - and the extra money.

In the ensuing months, Dr Colston could not bring himself to support Peter Reith's industrial relations legislation, but his vote was crucial in enabling the sale of one-third of Telstra. Labor's revenge was swift and devastating. Gathering material on Dr Colston's rorting of the travel allowance scheme was easily done. After all, Labor MPs had either turned a blind eye to it (or pretended to) for years. The result for Dr Colston was disgrace; he was charged with 28 counts of fraud. In mid-1999, his term having expired, he vacated the Senate, and the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the charges because Dr Colston was suffering from terminal cancer. The living owe the dead the truth. Dr Colston's long career on the public payroll, if not in public life, was undistinguished. But it would be misguided to believe that he was the only man or woman who has served in parliament in recent years whose contributions to the betterment of society were negligible. Dr Colston has gone but there can be no guarantee that we will not see his like again.